Alas! by the beating of my heart, and the trembling of my whole frame, I knew too well that on hiding myself from him depended my only chance of keeping my promise. I therefore took refuge in a cottage, the owner of which was well known to me, instead of hastening home along the park, where he must with ease have overtaken me. Accordingly, I followed a sharp turning which led through a little lane to the cottage, and making my way through the first room into the back one, I threw myself on a bed, trembling and breathless.
"What is the matter, my dear young lady?" cried the cottager.
"Ask no questions, but shut the door," was my answer.
She obeyed me, and I listened for several minutes for the sound of rapid footsteps, but in vain. I felt mortified at finding that Seymour did not trouble himself to pursue me; still I dared not go home, lest I should meet him on my road. I was therefore obliged to tell the cottager that I had a particular reason for wishing to avoid seeing Mr. Pendarves, and I would thank her to watch, if she could do it unsuspected, for his quitting the church, and inform me which way he went.
"Yes, yes," replied the woman, shaking her head, "he shall not see you if I can help it; for though to be sure I hear he is very good to the poor, folks say he is but a wild one, and they do say—"
Here, with an agonizing heart, and a gesture of indignant impatience, I bade her begone and do as I desired. When she had disappeared, I clasped my hands together convulsively. I sobbed aloud in the anguish of a wounded spirit; "And can it be," I cried, "that he whose sweet and pensive countenance so full of mournful tenderness I have just gazed upon for a moment, and shall never be able to forget again; can he be a man whose notoriously profligate habits make him the theme of abuse to a person like this?" No; there is not one pang in the catalogue of human suffering so acute as that which the heart feels from the consciousness of the decided depravity of a being tenderly beloved.
The woman on her return told me, "Mr. Pendarves was certainly seeking me; that he had, on leaving the church, looked round, and then ran several yards at full speed down the park, after which he stopped and she thought it probable that he would soon be past the front window, but she would look out and see." She did so, and having told me in a whisper, adding that "through a hole in the little muslin curtain I could see him without being seen," I was weak enough to take advantage of the opportunity. He walked dejectedly and with folded arms; the glow on his cheek, which the sight of me had deepened, was now succeeded by a deadly paleness; and I felt a bitterness which not even my sense of his errors could assuage, that he was wretched, and that I had made him so. My spy watched him into his own house, and only then I ventured to return to mine. I must say that I look back on this morning, spite of the sufferings which I endured, with much self-satisfaction, as I had completely acted up to the dictates of filial duty under the strongest temptation of disobeying them, as my mother was gone with De Walden to spend the day from home; and had I not conscientiously avoided Seymour, I might even without any positive infringement of duty, have exposed myself to the risk of seeing him undisturbed by her presence. Happily, however, my principles were too firm to allow me to be satisfied with this subterfuge, and, as I before said, I recall this day with satisfaction.
Every hour I expected that Seymour would call, but he did not come: however, I saw his servant ride up to the gate, deliver a note, and wait for an answer. I gave it verbally to my own maid. It was, that Mrs. Pendarves was gone out for the whole day. Shall I confess that I hoped Seymour would, on hearing this, make an attempt to see me, though I was resolved to refuse him attendance; and I was mortified that he did not? Just before I expected my mother and De Walden would return, I saw Seymour's servant come to the door again, and deliver another note, as it seemed; but when it was brought into the room, I found it was a letter to me! I was at once relieved, agitated, miserable and delighted; yet my hand trembled so much I thought I should never be able to open the letter. The following were its contents:—
"When this letter reaches you, Miss Pendarves, I shall be at a distance from that scene which to me can now never again be a home, but which is endeared to me by such tender recollections, that not even by the miserable ones which now must succeed to them can they be ever effaced.
"Oh, my beloved mother! could you have believed that your son could be refused admittance within the doors of your dearest friend, and forbidden even to speak to the playfellow and companion of his childhood, and the once appointed sharer of his heart and his fortunes? Could you have thought that the friend who adored you would have gone from home purposely to avoid him, and to avoid his just reproaches; because, without any new offence on his part, she had not only resolved never to allow him to address her daughter, but had pledged that daughter's hand, as he is informed, to another? And yet her parting words were, 'Your marriage with Helen depends wholly on yourself!' These words I never have forgotten; they regulated my conduct, they gave strength to my resolutions; I came hither full of hope, and I go hence overwhelmed with despair. For my claims, claims which I have never resigned, have been disregarded, and Helen will be the wife of a stranger, the acquaintance of yesterday!
"Nay more, at sight of me, Helen herself, the conscious Helen, fled as from a pestilence! And at what a moment too, when I had surprised her in an office the most flattering to your memory, and the most precious to my heart!
"Cruel Helen! what have you done? and what have I done to be so treated? Surely it was from your mother herself that I should first have heard of your intended marriage. But no: I refused to believe it till your flight and your countenance of terror on seeing me confirmed the horrible truth.
"But though you might not be able to tell it me yourself, why did Mrs. Pendarves avoid me? why, when I wrote to tell her I was coming for a single day, did she not make a point of seeing me either at her own house or at mine? But I will not detain you much longer from your attention to the happy stranger.
"Oh, Helen! had you continued to encourage my hopes, I might have been a happiness to myself and an ornament to society. But now—yes, now, it will be well if I am not a disgrace to it. But why do I continue to write? Shall I tell you, Helen? It is because I feel that I am addressing you for the last time; for the wife of the Count De Walden must not, I know, receive letters from
"Seymour Pendarves."
Though I now think, and you will probably think so too, that this letter was written full as much from the head as from the heart, you will not wonder that it bent me to the earth in agony; and that when my mother entered the hall on her return, she heard my voice uttering the tones of loud lamentation, and found me in the arms of the terrified servants. Never have I since suffered myself to be so weakly overpowered. I try to excuse such weakness by the state of my health at the time. Indisposition, and a tendency to a severe feverish cold, had prevented me from accompanying my mother and De Walden. Nor did the sudden surprise of seeing Pendarves steady my nerves, or decrease my fever; but these circumstances prepared the way for the letter to affect me as it did, and to excuse in some measure the state in which my mother beheld me.